Manufacturing plants of this kind are disclosed e.g. in the publications EP-A1-0,132,599 and EP-A2-0,297,034. The magazines mentioned therein are also known under the designation "multi-level revolving storage machines".
If a manufacturing plant is run non-attended and for a prolonger period of time, it may be necessary to place at disposal a considerable number of workpieces and tools, especially if the machining processes are quickly changing. This means that relatively large magazine space and handling devices covering wide areas are necessary. In this case, according to the status of the art, for operating one or more processing devices, often a plurality of multi-level revolving storage machines and, e.g., a portal robot are necessary, such as e.g. described in the publication "Moglichkeiten und Trends bei der automatischen Werkstuckhandhabung mit Industrierobotern" ["Possibilities and trends in the automatic workpiece handling by industrial robots"], published in "Zeitschrift fur industrielle Fertigung" 1986, No. 10, 76 (Springer-Verlag). It is known from experience that in this case the material expenditure and the space requirement are important. Furthermore, due to the largeness of the magazine spaces, the interruption time for restocking the magazines at their respective positions is long.